CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lydia Vatelli didn’t have anything remotely resembling that same confident look she had when Reno last saw her.
Now, on the sixth floor of a boarded-up factory on the industrial side of town, she looked like a conniving woman still trying to come up with a scheme to get out of another mess she’d gotten herself into.
It was an odd location for a conversation, but Mick’s men had tracked her to that location as her next hideout when the junkyard shed was destroyed. They decided to keep her there and not move her to their location.
But when Mick the Ticking Time Bomb walked through that door after Reno, Sal, and Dapper Tom walked in, she knew her schemes were over. She could put a lot over on a lot of people, but she’d never known anybody to put anything over on Micky Sinatra.
“What are you doing here, Mick?” she had the nerve to ask him. Even the capos on duty inside the safe house looked at each other with a check her out look on their faces.
But Lydia knew what she was doing. She was buying herself time. Her mind was still churning: she was born to scheme. But it was more about surviving a man like Mick rather than spinning a yarn he would believe. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” she added.
Mick was staring as they all sat down in what used to be the supervisor’s office inside that factory.
“Who was the lady you sacrificed at that junkyard?” Reno asked her.
“What junkyard?” Lydia asked.
“Oh so that’s what we’re doing?” Reno asked her. “You think we came here to play games with you?”
“I wasn’t at no junkyard,” Lydia said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And what lady?”
Sal and Tommy looked at each other.
“Just tell us who’s behind all of this,” said Reno. “Is it you?”
“Me? I’m not behind anything. I came to town to warn you that my old man knew about what happened and he was going to hit back. The last time I saw you he had sent some of his goons to that hotel room to take you out, and you was fighting for your life.”
Sal and Tommy didn’t know about any hotel incident, but they held their peace.
“He sent them to take me out,” said Reno, “or did you send them?”
“Why you keep putting me in it? I had nothing to do with any of this! I was only trying to help you, Reno.”
But before she could finish that sentence, Mick had jumped up from his chair, flipped her out of her chair, grabbed her up and carried her to the window.
The Gabrinis, terrified, hurried behind him. “Uncle Mick, wait!” Reno was yelling.
“We need intel from her!” Sal was yelling.
But Mick wasn’t listening to either one of them. A soon as he rushed up to that sixth-floor window, he threw Lydia out of it as if she was a sack of feathers.
She screamed in terror as he threw her. And just as she was certain she was about to be flung to her death, Mick grabbed her by the catch of her hand, the very last body part sailing out of that window.
Everybody was stunned. She looked up at him begging him to pull her up. Reno, Sal, and Tommy were begging him too. Even the capos, who knew how impulsive their boss could be, was as shocked as the Gabrinis were.
“Mick please!” Lydia was begging. “Don’t let me go, Mick. Pull me up.”
“Who?” Mick asked her as he barely held onto her hand.
“Mick, pull me up. I’m slipping, Mick. Pull me up!”
“Who’s behind this bullshit?”
“I can’t hold on, Mick!”
“Who’s behind it? Who!” Mick yelled out as he loosened his grip on her.
“Mick, don’t!” Lydia cried.
“Uncle Mick don’t!” Reno cried.
“Who’s behind it?!!” Mick yelled so loud it felt as if their eardrums were going to burst.
But it paid dividends because Lydia cracked. “My father!” she cried out. “It’s my father!”
“That’s bullshit,” Sal said.
“No it’s not!” cried Lydia. “My father’s behind it all! My father’s behind everything!”
“How do we know you’re not lying now,” Reno said, “the same way you just lied to me about that junkyard?”
“He’s on his way to your house now,” Lydia said. “He’s the one who made me do everything I did. He sits in a gray Infiniti and watch everything unfold. He watches everything. He’s on his way to your house now.”
They realized she had no clue he had already arrived at Reno’s house. Reno took advantage of that. “He’s on his way to my house for what?”
“Pull me up and I’ll tell you,” Lydia cried. “Please just pull me back inside.”
But Mick, instead, loosened his grip on her hand even further, causing her to scream.
“Mick, take it easy,” Reno said to his unpredictable uncle. “We still need intel.”
“I’ll tell you everything if you let me back in.”
Again, Mick loosened his grip, which stunned the Gabrinis.
“Okay okay!” Lydia cried out. It apparently worked. “Just don’t drop me, Mick,” she said. “Please don’t drop me.”
“Then talk!” Mick said. “Why is your father on his way to Reno’s house?”
“The news said he and his family escaped to his house in the suburbs,” Lydia said.
“He told me all he needed to do was to get inside the gate of his house. That’s all he needed was to be where he knew Reno, his wife, and his children would be.
And then he was going to do to them what Reno did to his children and grandchildren.
He said he just needs to get inside that gate. ”
When they heard her say those words, their collective hearts dropped. “He’s at the house now!” Reno cried.
“And he made sure we would leave to go find her while he was still inside that gate!” cried Sal. And all three Gabrinis took off.
Mick, angry that they’d been duped, let go of her hand and took off too.
His capos, stunned, ran to the window and looked over the ledge. They saw her going down as her screams became more and more distance. She fell all six flights to her certain death.
They looked at each other. And shook their heads. “That’s one man you don’t fuck with,” one of Mick’s capos reminded the other one.
But he needed no reminding. Watching the body of Lydia Vatelli, smashed on that concrete below, was evidence enough.
And by the time Mick ran out of that building, Reno was already behind the wheel of Mick’s Escalade, Sal and Tommy were hopping onto the backseat, and Mick had only enough time to hop in on the front passenger seat before Reno sped away.
As Reno sped away, Sal and Tommy were on their phones trying to call Trina or Jimmy or Dommi or Grace or anybody! But every phone went straight to voice mail.
“I’m just getting Voice Mails,” Sal said anxiously.
“Every phone?” asked Reno.
“Every phone,” said Tommy.
“Call the front gate,” said Reno.
“I already did,” said Tommy. “The gate phone went to voice mail too.”
“What the fuck?” said Reno as he sped even faster.
Mick quickly pressed buttons on his infotainment screen until a GPS monitor came on. He frowned. “There’s no signal.”
“No signal where?” Reno asked.
Mick looked at him. “There’s no signal on your property. There’s no signal anywhere.”
“Oh God,” Tommy said. His family was in that house too. “Don’t let it be an explosion.”
But if the Moose was going to repay Reno in kind, they knew that was exactly what it was going to be.
And that was only if, they all thought as terror gripped that SUV, there hadn’t already been one.